Casinos are flashy, upbeat and brimming with excitement. The music blaring, the coins clinking and the lights flashing are all designed to draw in the crowds and create an energy that’s hard to resist. Even though there’s a wide range of people inside casinos, from regulars who strut with confidence to those who are hoping to get lucky, they all share one thing in common – they have a blast.

While there’s nothing wrong with a bit of gambling, it’s important to know the odds are stacked against you. The best way to win is through discipline and the ability to walk away if you’re not ahead. There’s also something about the casino experience that encourages people to cheat and steal to increase their chances of winning.

Martin Scorsese once again recruited his A-team of Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci for Casino, which he wrote as a “civil portrait of Sin City”. The film’s opening sequence features deliberate echoes of Goodfellas, but the action here takes place at Tangiers, not the Copacabana. Nevertheless, Casino is superior to Goodfellas because it has a more stable and linear story, plus better filming. In addition to the superb performances by the leads, the movie benefits from a series of terrific songs by Fleetwood Mac and The Animals that perfectly complement the film’s theme. Also, like Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, Casino is one of the few movies that truly captures the feel of Vegas.